Editors lobby No 10 over supermarket censorship

Britain's leading magazine editors are to confront the Prime Minister over an OFT ruling that they fear will give supermarkets control over content.

They will warn Tony Blair at a scheduled meeting this week that a shake-up in the way titles are distributed could give supermarkets greater buying power.

Thirty editors, representing most of the country's major publishing groups, have also written to Blair. They include GQ editor Dylan Jones, Alexandra Shulman, his counterpart at Vogue, and Elsa McAlonan, editor of Woman's Own. 'Editors fear supermarket control of editorial [content] is the inevitable outcome,' the letter says. The Prime Minister has courted the country's magazine editors over the last few years in an attempt to reach voters who do not read newspapers.

'This is an issue which the magazine industry is determined should be addressed at the highest level of government,' said a source within the industry.

The OFT ruled last month that current arrangements, which give wholesalers the right to run local monopolies, are anti-competitive. But publishers argue that without them it would not be profitable to distribute titles to remote parts of the country. The arrangements will end on 1 May unless the government intervenes.